


Risen After A Fall

by BeaRyan



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Linctavia - Freeform, Plothole Fill, TW: Kidnapping, a happier fic than the tags would have you believe, tw: Forced assimilation, tw: death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill-in / fix-it fic for Lincoln.  He needs a backstory to explain why he didn’t speak to Octavia for so long and why he fell in love with her. Set in the future of the series, this story begins just after the Grounders and Arkers have successfully invaded Mount Weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risen After A Fall

The first adult, a woman with gray hair and a hunched back, fell over with a wail twenty feet past the blast doors of Mount Weather. It could have been the sight of the Reapers, lying dead where they'd fallen to the Arkers and Grounders. She might have been overwhelmed as she watched Abby and an assistant tending to their patients, the half-dead Grounders they were pulling out of the disposal carts from Mount Weather. Probably though, it was the radiation. She blistered and screamed, and, after a nod from Indra, one of the Grounders silenced her with a swipe of his blade. 

Most of the Ark soldiers were deep within the Mountain, still clearing the lower levels of Mountain Men, but Indra had decided the first group of Mountain Men she’d been charged to dispatch, a frightened group of thirty people of mixed ages hiding in a dorm room together, needed to come to the surface and submit to the authority of the land and the Commander. Lincoln and Octavia were a part of this group, occupying the growing gray space between Grounder and Arkers. Kane was there, in theory to represent the people of the Ark, but he’d acknowledged that this wasn’t his fight. His only mission was to get the surviving members of The 100 to safety. He was content to leave vengeance and justice to the Grounders. 

A second adult fell and then a third quickly followed, each dispatched by a Grounder as soon as their knees hit the earth. It wasn’t clear if it was for mercy or convenience, but some people from inside the Mountain would never see its surface. A fourth began to lean against the wall for support and the child in her arms, barely more than a toddler began to wail. Octavia ran to her, putting herself between the woman and the quickly approaching Grounder soldier. 

“You can’t murder a baby,” she said. Her own sword was ready, but not yet raised. 

“Take her,” the woman said, her voice shaking as she shoved the child towards Octavia. “She’s one of you. She’ll be fine above. She’s done nothing wrong. None of this is her fault.” With the child now safe in Octavia’s arms, the woman slid to the ground. Tears rolled down her face as she said, “We call her Kay. She has a K.”

Lincoln lurched forward and slit the woman’s throat, nearly decapitating her. He trembled as he stood over her body with his machete gripped in both hands, ready to strike again. 

“Lincoln?” Octavia knew he was a warrior - they’d all killed - but this was a blistered mother quickly dying, not an attacker, and he’d used far more force than necessary to dispatch her. The tension in his posture was that of a man who wanted to strike again but lacked a target. “Lincoln?” she repeated. 

Lincoln didn’t respond. He just quickly shoved up the sleeve of the child’s shirt, exposing the K tattooed on her arm. “Give her to me,” he ordered. 

“No,” Octavia shouted. “You’re not yourself. I’m not handing you a baby.” 

“She’s mine,” he roared back. 

The sound echoed in the tunnel, and the child began to cry, the reverberations of her screams mixing with Lincoln’s until the entire group stilled. Another Mountain Man began to fall, wailing as he blistered, and was quickly silenced by a Grounder soldier. 

“She belongs to the tribe, to her mother’s line,” Indra said. “Her fate is up to the Commander. Everyone to the surface. Faster.” 

Octavia didn’t move. “What do you mean she’s yours?” 

“You never wanted to know about my past before. Let’s go. To the surface. We need to see the Commander. I’m not leaving here without Kennedy.” 

 

The group of thirty mountain dwellers that Indra and her soldiers had begun herding to the surface was down to ten children and one adult by the time they emerged from the passage into the sunlight. Three of the children were slowing and struggling for breath, and the Mountain woman hovered around them, carrying the youngest on her hip and encouraging the other two on. She, herself, seemed unharmed by the surface radiation. Octavia gripped Kennedy tightly with one arm, unwilling to surrender her even to Lincoln, although the girl batted at her with clenched fists and struggled for her freedom and kept her sword ready in the other hand. The six remaining children stayed close together, some weeping quietly and others looking to Octavia and the Mountain woman for reassurance as they made their way out into the light of day. 

Indra quickly crossed to the Commander and they turned away from the small, pale crowd flinching in the sunlight and hesitantly touching the grass and flowers. The Commander spun around and called out, “Is it true? Does she have Kennedy’s mark?” 

Lincoln nodded. 

The Commander straightened her posture and paused, readying herself to speak. “By the line of my mother I claim my right to the child.” 

“Lexa, no,” Lincoln yelled. 

“This is our way,” she said. 

“What’s going on?” Octavia asked. She resettled Kennedy on her hip and adjusted the grip on her weapon. 

Kane had taken up a position near Octavia. She was one of The 100 and currently holding the target of too much attention. He needed to be ready. “The Grounders are a matriarchal society. Children belong to their mother’s families.” 

“What does that mean?” Octavia asked. 

Lincoln answered, “It means we’ll have to fight our way out of here with my daughter.” 

The warriors had formed a perimeter around the clearing where the tunnel from within the mountain ended. If their initial intention had been to keep the Mountain woman and children in check, their attention had since shifted to Lincoln. Weapons were drawn and ready. 

Lexa moved to the center of the ring. Her head was held high and she stood like queen, ready to issue an edict and have it enforced if necessary. “Lincoln, you were once a teacher for your people. When your family was taken by the Mountain Men, you asked for time to mourn, and I granted it. I now ask you to return to work. My sister’s daughter has returned to us and does not know our ways. Will you be her teacher?” 

Lincoln didn’t hesitate to answer. His voice rang out, “Yes, my Commander,” with a certainty that made Octavia flinch. She’d assumed they’d be going home to Camp Jaha together tonight, but suddenly that seemed in question. Perhaps they’d be going to the cave. Perhaps they wouldn’t be together at all. 

Lexa approached the Mountain woman. “Why aren’t you dead?” 

The woman’s voice shook when she spoke, and she shoved her two feeble older children behind her while angling her body to move the younger one in her arms as far from Lexa as possible. “I don’t know.” 

“May I see your arm?” Lexa asked. 

The woman hesitated, and Indra marched forward, grabbing the woman’s left arm and shoving up the sleeve of her shirt to reveal the skin below. An open circle was tattooed in green on the inside of her forearm. 

“You are from the Sea People,” Lexa said. “We will send for someone who knows their marks.” 

“I’m what?” The woman scanned the circle of armed warriors around the clearing for some other, more familiar authority to make sense of the words.

“You may take your children inside. Athos will go with you to protect you from anyone too eager for quick justice. Lincoln will be your teacher.” 

Lexa worked her way through the children quickly but gently. Each had a small tattoo on his arm, and as she reviewed each of them Octavia and Kane realized the Sea People marked their children in green and the desert people in red while Lincoln’s forest people used black. Each mark was different. While Kennedy’s K was a straightforward letter with serifs, others were indecipherable symbols and the styles varied widely. After reviewing each child, Lexa asked Lincoln if he would be the child’s teacher, and each time he agreed. 

Octavia nervously kept a running tally. Being a step-mother at sixteen was overwhelming enough, even if the child was now making adorable little noises as she slept in Octavia’s arms, but this meeting was quickly growing into something else. Running a boarding school for a bunch of scared kids… well, really it wouldn’t be that different from life at the dropship. At least this time no one would be trying to kill them. This was only the first group though. How many more stolen children were still inside the mountain? 

_A month later ___

__Bellamy stood at the treeline and studied the scene. Octavia was leading a group of younger children through a series of poses with wooden swords while Lincoln led a discussion with the older group. That a Grounder led the philosophical discussions about the works of Sun Tzu and Thomas Jefferson while a girl who’d lived under the floor on the Ark taught children with single digit ages to use weapons and the only surviving adult from the Mountain changed diapers was a topic of much debate at Camp Jaha. Whatever else they had to say, no one argued that it didn’t work._ _

__Lincoln called out, “I know you’re there,” and Bellamy reluctantly approached. When he was close enough, Lincoln asked, “Why have you come?”_ _

__“To talk to you.” Bellamy kept his distance and waited._ _

__Lincoln set the older children to work, assigning them pages to review in their books, all recovered from inside the Mountain, and then made his way over to Bellamy. Neither man spoke; instead they stood side by side staring at the scene before them. The Mountain Woman had the six youngest children gathered on a blanket in the shade for story time. Kennedy spotted her father, temporarily free of his students, and attempted an escape. Lincoln waved to her teacher, approving the toddler’s trek._ _

__Bellamy observed, “She looks like she could be Octavia’s daughter.”_ _

__“Say what you mean,” Lincoln said._ _

__“O. isn’t going to ask, so I am. Who is her mother?”_ _

__“I was married when I was 18, and a father at 19. When my child was two days old, the Mountain Men came. We found enough of my wife to know she was gone. There was never any sign of the child.”_ _

__Bellamy prodded, picking at the threads of the story for any part of it which might be dangerous for Octavia. “What was she like?”_ _

__“She was fearless with long, dark hair.”_ _

__“Like Octavia,” Bellamy said._ _

__“Like her in some ways. Very different in others.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Bellamy said, crossing his arms. “But she looked like Octavia and O healed you or something, right?”_ _

__“I mourned in the way of my people, and when that didn’t help I mourned in the old way. I took a vow of silence and dedicated myself to study. The world was still nothing but pain.”_ _

__Kennedy fell, landing on her hands and knees. She let out a short frustrated yell, punched the grass, and then pushed herself back to standing and continued her trek to Lincoln. He smiled as he continued his story. “Then your people came, and you were so stupidly joyful. You were all destined for death, more fell every day, and still you celebrated and pushed on. You fought for each other and for life, and all I wanted was to die. When you chained me in the dropship, I was ready for my fate. Octavia wouldn’t let me have it. She forced me to live, and so I did.”_ _

__Bellamy studied his sister’s friend. Lincoln’s beard was filling in. A large, dark tattoo covered most of his neck, and he physically dwarfed everyone around him. In all the times Bellamy had wished he could get Octavia out of their small apartment and into the world, he’d never pictured a man like this with her._ _

__Kennedy tripped and stumbled, but she made it, half walking, half falling into her father’s arms, and Lincoln drew the child in close and kissed her. Lincoln was as much as a brother could ever want for his sister: kind, educated, helpful, skilled; still, Bellamy’s stomach flopped when the child struggled for her freedom and ran towards Octavia._ _

__“She’s only sixteen,” Bellamy said._ _

__“Here on Earth that’s middle aged. She has a job and a warrior’s skills. Why shouldn’t she have a husband and a child, too?”_ _

__Bellamy took a step away from Lincoln. His eyes were wide and his voice incredulous. “Are you asking for permission to _marry _Octavia?”___ _

____“Do you think your permission matters to her?”_ _ _ _

____Bellamy watched as his sister settled Kennedy on her hip, planted a kiss on her head, and drew the sword strapped to her back, modeling a fighting stance for the children gathered around her who then drew their wooden swords and copied her pose. The Earth Skills classes he’d taken on the Ark had never included anything like this, and Octavia had never taken them at all. Somehow though, the past had gotten them all to this moment, and everything felt right._ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to SexyMeatPies for the beta. Comments are appreciated.


End file.
